advertisement


Where do you stand on nuclear power (fission)?

Joe said:
Its worth re-posting this ( every few days really )

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47783992

Scroll down to the graphic of the top ten worst and look how marvellously Germany does.
Click to expand...

Germany is phasing out both nuclear (by 2022) & coal / lignite (by 2038).

By comparison, China will build over 700 coal-fired power stations within that period (although I was ‘reliably informed’ at lunch today that China is also now accelerating its production and implementation of solar technology faster than any other nation).

In my view, only existing nuclear research plants should be kept going for the development of fusion. All else is environmental madness... & we’ve far too much of that already.
 
Swamp Thing said:
Highest ever tidal range in Boston is just over 4m. (max-min) = range on any given day.
Click to expand...
That doesn't stack up against the tables, last high tide was this evening at 19.10, 6.54m. Low 14.49, 1.32m. Range = 5.22m. Modest though c.f. the Severn Bore.

As for creating a lagoon in Hull, I think that's a great idea. Can we have it stretching from Hedon in the east, Beverley to the North and say Hessle or Ferriby to the west?
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Did you know that burning coal puts waaay more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear does?
Click to expand...

No, I didn’t, but I just looked it up :

Persons living close to coal-fired installations are subjected to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation per annum.

To put the above in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems annually from natural and man-made sources.

I do see that the nuclear industry PR likes to trumpet this relative non-issue, which does not take into account the radiation of spent nuclear fuel, some of which remains life threatening to humans for over 100,000 years....

>ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS !

(please forgive me for screaming )

Edit : above info is from Scientific American, which I think is moderately neutral.
 
But the spent fuel radiation isn’t in the environment. And the half life of that coal ash residue is pretty significant too.

But my point was that you seemed to be advocating coal fired generation in favour of nuclear, but in terms of release of radioactivity into the environment, your choice is far more responsible for the release than nuclear, even including the accidents.
 
stevec67 said:
That doesn't stack up against the tables, last high tide was this evening at 19.10, 6.54m. Low 14.49, 1.32m. Range = 5.22m. Modest though c.f. the Severn Bore.

As for creating a lagoon in Hull, I think that's a great idea. Can we have it stretching from Hedon in the east, Beverley to the North and say Hessle or Ferriby to the west?
Click to expand...

Should be less than 5. I think we have more than one measuring system operating here.

I'd sacrifice Hedon and Spurn if we can take out Withernesa,
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
But the spent fuel radiation isn’t in the environment. And the half life of that coal ash residue is pretty significant too.

But my point was that you seemed to be advocating coal fired generation in favour of nuclear, but in terms of release of radioactivity into the environment, your choice is far more responsible for the release than nuclear, even including the accidents.
Click to expand...

(A quick search has not yielded the half-life of coal ash, but I doubt it’s 100,000 years)

The issue in your original post is essentially should we increase nuclear power generation. I am strongly against for reasons that I hope are obvious.

I am also strongly pro phasing out coal production as soon as possible. I think Germany is making sensible steps in the right direction : frankly, so what if their nuclear backlash was triggered by Fukushima- it darned well should have been.

Would you & others advocating increasing nuclear capacity be OK with a nuclear power station, complete with nuclear waste storage facility, 10 miles from your home ? If so, please say so.
 
Yank said:
Why can't we just fire it into the sun?
Click to expand...

Am pretty sure you were joking. But according to a friend at work who is almost as big an outer space geek as Joe P, this question gets asked frequently. He says there are three problems. First, the waste is heavy so the cost per launch is very high. Second, hitting the Sun is a very difficult thing to do. And three, were one of the rockets to explode in the outer atmosphere, the fallout would suck big time.

So what we really need is...

 
jtrade said:
Would you & others advocating increasing nuclear capacity be OK with a nuclear power station, complete with nuclear waste storage facility, 10 miles from your home ? If so, please say so.
Click to expand...
Yes, especially if they built it over, say, Bradford. Or Dewsbury.
 
jtrade said:
Would you & others advocating increasing nuclear capacity be OK with a nuclear power station, complete with nuclear waste storage facility, 10 miles from your home ? If so, please say so.
Click to expand...
I used to live near the bomb factory in Burghfield. Surrounding a plutonium core with high explosives - what could possibly go wrong
A nuclear power station must be at least 100s of times safer than an assembled Trident missile
 
jtrade said:
Would you & others advocating increasing nuclear capacity be OK with a nuclear power station, complete with nuclear waste storage facility, 10 miles from your home ? If so, please say so.
Click to expand...
For the record, yes I'd be fine with that.
 
cubastreet said:
Nuclear power has a poor safety record. Nobody has figured out what to do with the waste yet. The industry's PR department has a large budget though, which is reassuring.
Click to expand...
Nuclear power has a very good safety record. Compare to the number of deaths in coal mining, for coal fired generation, and accidents in coal fired power stations, and nuclear compares very well. Then compare the number of civilian deaths from respitory diseases attributable to coal fired power generation. Nuclear safety incidents attract great media attention, so may appear disproportionately visible, compared to others.

And the costs for nuclear are high, because the cost of decommissioning has (rightly) to be provided for from the outset. Whereas coal, oil and gas get a free pass. If the environmental harms from fossil fuel generation had to be mitigated and the costs for this built into the project from the outset, then coal, oil and gas would be hugely more expensive than they are now. We have, in effect, paid forward those costs for decades, and now face the reckoning.
 
Cracking high tide today as I walked to work. HT was 0657, I passed at 0750 and it was nearly slopping over the sides. Maybe 6" down on the high point, you could see the wet timbers. The sluices were all nailed shut, there's a big step down to the drains inland and it would flood dramatically. Bigger again tonight at 1910, I'm intrigued that the HTs are only 12h13 apart. Never studied tides, they're interesting.

This is a strange part of the world. I went for a bike ride and got to the coast. There were WW2 fortifications, I thought "Oh, I'll climb that bank and see the sea" Nope. This was within an hour of HT as well. No sea, just endless flat land and drains. Not even mud flats. They must be another half mile off.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Nuclear power has a very good safety record. Compare to the number of deaths in coal mining, for coal fired generation, and accidents in coal fired power stations, and nuclear compares very well. Then compare the number of civilian deaths from respitory diseases attributable to coal fired power generation. Nuclear safety incidents attract great media attention, so may appear disproportionately visible, compared to others.

And the costs for nuclear are high, because the cost of decommissioning has (rightly) to be provided for from the outset. Whereas coal, oil and gas get a free pass. If the environmental harms from fossil fuel generation had to be mitigated and the costs for this built into the project from the outset, then coal, oil and gas would be hugely more expensive than they are now. We have, in effect, paid forward those costs for decades, and now face the reckoning.
Click to expand...

Yep, fossil fuels are bad, I won't argue with that.

Re: radioactive waste - the strategy is to bury it in the sand and hope someone comes up with a better idea in the future. What happens when some third world megalomaniac sends a missile in there?
 
The lifetime CO2 output of the Didcot power station would be extremely expensive to scrub out of the atmosphere.
There was a 600MW oil fueled plant near my home and it was pumping out tons of sulphur dioxide every day on top of the CO2
 
cubastreet said:
Yep, fossil fuels are bad too.
Click to expand...
If you look at the OP, I'm mainly advocating nuclear as a low-carbon way to get from where we are now, to where we want to be (ie 100% renewables). Without nuclear in the mix, and as a substantial part of that mix, we face either lifestyle curtailment (power cuts, much bigger energy bills) or a gap in generating capacity we just can't fill.

Modern nuclear is safer, harder to make weapons from, and in all likelihood, easier to decommission. Certainly, small modular reactor designs (SMRs) look likely to be much simpler to decommission. They're also more flexible in siting, so you could install them for specific applications (powering Network Rail, or steel plant, or whatever).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top